


Tu Me Manques

by galaxbee



Series: Little Dragon Age Fics [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: And I think that's tragic and beautiful, But a more direct translation is "You are missing from me", But the second part has some other characters and is less abstract, Chapter titles are from Memories by Panic! At The Disco, It's Cole-centric in the first part, Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, This is mostly just sadness, Tu me manques means I miss you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 12:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5929059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxbee/pseuds/galaxbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stone of worry worsens as he hears pain. No, not hears, recognises; the pain of missing someone so deeply that the soul aches.</p><p>Cole’s breath stutters and fails. The pain sings, familiar songs of grief merging and mourning. The Inquisitor's party is returning, but they aren’t there. The stone grows and explodes, filling every part of his being with anxiety as he searches, scours memories and finds the worst has been replaced by reality. The worry turns to anguish and grief, because the Inquisitor’s song is silent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How I Miss Yesterday

Cole collects flowers and leaves with a fraction of his focus, severing stems to encourage further growth as he gathers supplies. The Inquisitor always needs more elfroot and blood lotus after returning to Skyhold, the bitter leaves boiled to heal small wounds and the flowers turned to a biting poison used to coat blades. He doesn't mind the menial task; he will combine his pickings with theirs as he has done time and time before, and there will be enough to heal the cuts of those inside the castle, as well as those out.

It makes the Inquisitor happy that he helps; that he doesn't rely on them as all others do, that he is willing to shoulder the responsibility as much as they. He wants to help, and the gratitude is as guiding as his own nature. The fact remains that Cole is simply passing the time until their return, their absence a stone of worry in the back of his mind. He will always worry when he isn't with them; as deadly as the Inquisitor's blades are, his can be where they are not.

The worry dulls out the hurts of others, his own pain requesting his attention. It is a part of being human, Varric says, but Cole is unsure he would have been able to adapt so easily without the Inquisitor. They give his pain their attention so he can soothe the hurt of others, something that never stops startling him. Being cared about is strange, soft, like a gentle hand holding his when the darkness beckons.

The stone of worry worsens as he hears pain. No, not hears, recognises; the pain of missing someone so deeply that the soul aches, and he stands quickly, rapidly, a hand coming up to steady his hat. He brushes aside his own pain and reaches out for the other, trying to understand the cause. He wants to help.

Cole’s breath stutters and fails. The pain sings, familiar songs of grief merging and mourning. The Inquisitor's party is returning, but they aren’t there. The stone grows and explodes, filling every part of his being with anxiety as he searches, scours memories and finds the worst has been replaced by reality. The worry turns to anguish and grief, because the Inquisitor’s song is silent. The pain is louder than anything he's ever known, louder than Cole and lyrium and the Nightmare in the Fade and the dragon screeching its anger, the stone becoming a boulder becoming a world. The pain is his, and he's drowning under the weight of it, because the Inquisitor is absent.

Cole falls, legs crumpling beneath him, his breath catching in his throat and forcing sound as his lungs demand air. He rocks back and forth on each heave of his chest, the watery sadness spilling over and down his face. There are cries of shock that he hears as though he’s underwater and anger burns beside the sadness. Don't they know that he's drowning? That the air is still in their silence, sadness filling his lungs fit to bursting? With the drowning comes an absence, a stark blankness inside his stomach, and he curls inwards as if he could fill it.

The silence seems to echo in Cole’s mind beyond his own pain, a cacophony of emotions he doesn't know enough about to comprehend fully. His heart is filled with dull knives determined to tear it out and there's a stone in his stomach that wants to pull him through the ground. His fingers scrabble at his knees, trying to find purchase beyond his own pain, but it's reflected, refracted through every part of his being like his face in the Inquisitor's blade, gifted to him from those outside himself and driven in by his own hand.

There's songs of confusion surrounding him, ensnaring him inside his own pain. He's too real to leave it, to cling to something else, and he can only exist inside his mind and his body, numb with pain and wet with tears and aching with a grief he can't put a name to. The confusion is marred with condescension and frustration, but they don't know that his world has come crashing down around him, because the Inquisitor was only ever a leader for them.

Anger and bitterness and sadness and grief and worry and blame and confusion and irritation and bitterness threaten to twist him, taint him, turn him into something he isn't and never wanted to be. His fear keeps it at bay and he flings memories at the stone, attempting to break it; into the hole, attempting to fill it. But their warm hand in his is replaced by their limp one in Cassandra's, their smiling face looking down at him replaced by their empty one looking up, every hug and every laugh and every happiness and every kiss and every beautiful inch of their being hidden behind the borrowed memories of a bloodstained one lying on the ground, smaller and larger and more resounding than the dot at the end of the sentence.

The silence beyond his song and the wall of confusion is broken by a shocked cry. The Inquisitor is absent, and the body is there to prove it.


	2. How I (Won't) Let It Fade Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She calls him “Inquisitor”. 
> 
> Cole pauses, thinking over the term. It means wearing a mask to hide the pain, a smile to hide the hurt, a hat to hide the fatigue. It means being seen as a leader, a healer, a fighter, a helper. Cole has only ever been the last thing.

Silence falls like a shroud, blanketing the entirety of Skyhold. The sky has grown heavy above the ancient fortress, the grey clouds in the bright blue threatening to burst into tears. But the sky holds back its mourning to allow the grief of the earth. For several days, the only sounds are hushed whispers and soft crying. Anyone that breaks the silence is shushed, hidden, even as their grief turns to anger and despair that cannot be soothed. Cole hides himself, stealing away into an unoccupied room. Plants weave over the broken wall, a soft light falling through a hole in the roof. There's a table in the middle, boxes for chairs, and the wood remembers laughter and sunlight. Cole likes listening to it, even as his own sadness washes over the brightness. He leaves, then, and returns after the despair has abated. He will not tarnish the memory with his grief.

The quiet and stillness remains until a war table meeting, called by Josephine. The drinks are bitter without the honey, the scouts stressed without the laughter, the soldiers unsettled without the leader. But the small aches and wounds are soothed, because between Cole and the Inquisitor there is enough. Decisions still need to be made, because the world is not broken yet. The closest circle is invited, and they drag heavy limbs and sorrowing minds into the War Room. Cole remains seated at their table, listening.

Dorian jokes, layering his words with sarcasm and false comfort. His eyes are clean of kohl, and his face is younger without it, even as the grief has seemed to add years. Solas is weary; with the loss of the Inquisitor has come the loss of hope, his one true friend faded into the darkness. They would not have died if the Fade and the world were one, he knows, and the guilt threatens to swallow his soul. Cassandra's light is dulled, her faith shaken. Words catch in her throat and her limbs shake from overuse. She carried in the body. She blames herself. Vivienne seems cold as always, but her outfit is dark, her face softer. She's angry, too, a bitterness at the world that let a child die because of a glowing hand.

Varric is… difficult to understand. The grief and pain are bundled together with the hurt he feels for Cole, kid and kidding as absent as the Inquisitor. Cole stands and begins walking, still listening. The Iron Bull is resigned, but saddened. Death is inevitable, but he would have liked to stay its hand, Cole knows. Sera is bitter. She wants to destroy everything that ever touched the Inquisitor before it ever did, but she can't. Cole tried. Blackwall wishes he could have taken their place.

Leliana is a wilted flower, vengeance humming through her veins as a barrier against the cold. She stays her hand, on the Inquisitor's request. Josephine is young in soul and pain, maintaining a wobbly smile, polite and courteous as always, but her speech falters. She's using her old candle; the one the Inquisitor gifted her, that smells of home, hurts too much. Cullen is angry. Cole stills, waiting. Time is less than it was, slipping through his fingers like soft and silky fabric, unsullied by the stains. It's easy to allow it to pass, but the anger does not abate, and he continues.

The meeting is that of disagreement and subtle jabs, blame being placed senselessly and needlessly. Guilt and grief leads to provocation, leads to anger and frustration, but Cole cannot help until the river flows over the edge of the waterfall. After an hour of disagreement and subtle jabs, Cullen slams his fist down on the war table. A faint imprint in paper, the slight sound of the Inquisitor's carefully placed markers shuddering. Cole had watched them being positioned, once, so they were all pointing in the same direction, and had helped maintain them. But there's no one to care, now. 

One of them topples over, the one marking the most recent victory of the inquisition, Cullen steps back, burying his face in his hands. They're cool against the heat of his head, the song quiet beside the pain even as the chains try to twist tighter around him. The room is quiet, despairing, despondent in the futility of their actions.

Cole arrives, opens the door to the room. Softly, gently, as the Inquisitor would have done. His shoes are silent against the floor, as theirs were, and the room stills as he moves. He reaches out, retracts, forcing his hand to still. The sight of the War Table, the accomplishments and the expectations, reminds him of the stone settled in his stomach. He wonders if it will ever leave, but knows that to stop hurting would mean forgetting. 

He tries again, and corrects the toppled marker, adjusting it to what it was before. Nobody moves to stop him as he fixes the pins in place, facing the correct direction, with slightly trembling hands. The pin marking the ongoing assistance of Rhys and Evangeline seems to imprint itself in his mind. They were so worried that they would cause his ire and irritation, the question borne of the innocent want to help. They had. Cole dashes an arm across his eyes, under his hat, and the sleeve comes away wet. He makes a decision.

Slowly, gently, he begins telling them what the Inquisitor had planned. What they had wanted. What they wouldn't have asked for, but would have liked to have. Some statements are met with disapproval from those that look upon him with minimal favour, disbelieving the truth of his words. Cole knows the Inquisitor far better than he has ever known himself, and refrains from hitting Vivienne and Sera for their distaste, as much as the Inquisitor may have wanted to at times. They would have torn down the world if it would make Cole happy, yet their death had done exactly that with no positive effects.

Most of the concepts are met with general approval. The Inquisitor is behind every one of them, the thoughts Cole plucked from their minds in happier times making way for solutions. Progress is made. A party is organised for each area, to sweep over what had been done and complete that which hadn't. They will never be as efficient as the Inquisitor, but they will do. Cole does not remind them to collect elfroot, but they know.

Solas and Dorian begin researching ways to kill the dragon and destroy Corypheus. They work on the task with a determined fervor, a closely focused devotion to cope with the loss. Vivienne helps Josephine with diplomatic matters, easily manipulating nobles to twist the death to the Inquisition's advantage. Cole detests the masks, is confused by the concept of an Inquisition without the Inquisitor. The Iron Bull and Leliana plan. Only Cole is sure of what, but he disapproves until he learns of their end goal. Varric sends out letters to his connections, requesting small but beneficial items by cashing in favours owed. 

Cole flits around, helping all of them. Finding books, reading emotions, making suggestions and small requests. He comforts and soothes as best he can, but he cannot bring himself to lie for their benefit. He knows their hurt. He knows it more than they do, more than they ever could comprehend. The others have lost a friend that only few took time to know, but he has lost his light, the gentle hand guiding him out of the darkness, patient and worrying and loving. Solas is uncertain of whether Cole knows love, still, but he knows it enough to put a name to it, even without the pain accompanying the absence of it.

Time continues to pass, and Skyhold recovers. The clouds pass overhead, casting shadows, but sun streams through the gap in the roof. The warmth dries the table, lets the pain of the stone lessen enough for Cole to begin chipping at it. Sometimes, it just leaves shards carving out his insides. Those days, he forgets himself in helping others, and understands more about the Inquisitor as he does so.

It is one of these days that it happens. Cole dusts his hands off on the borrowed apron, flour falling onto the dusty floor. He'll help clean it, so they don't particularly mind. The Inquisitor had apologised to the kitchen-hands for him, before he knew what had happened, but he would still help. The girl there thanks him as he picks up a broom, beginning to sweep the dust on the floor into a neat pile. She calls him “Inquisitor”. 

Cole pauses, thinking over the term. It means responsibility, being relied on, being depended on. It means doing what has to be done, making choices nobody else wants to. It means wearing a mask to hide the pain, a smile to hide the hurt, a hat to hide the fatigue. It means being seen as a leader, a healer, a fighter, a helper. Cole has only ever been the last thing. But he could be more. He doesn’t correct her. There is a sense of finality in the small action.

He saved Cole by becoming him. If nothing else, he can save the Inquisitor by doing the same.


End file.
